I wanted to remove mono because it was causing some weird dependency problems, and I don’t need it. Here’s what Apt wanted to do:

WARNING: The following essential packages will be removed.
This should NOT be done unless you know exactly what you are doing!
apt debian-archive-keyring (due to apt)
0 upgraded, 0 newly installed, 1073 to remove and 6 not upgraded.
1 not fully installed or removed.
After this operation, 3076MB disk space will be freed.
You are about to do something potentially harmful.
To continue type in the phrase ‘Yes, do as I say!’
?] no
Abort.

So, XFS is officially the best file system around at the moment. Why do I say this?

1.) It’s fast, especially when I have around 50,000 3MB-4GB files being pulled by apache for a site almost constantly.
2.) It supports online defragmenting.
3.) When I know the drive is going to fail, backup/restore is a piece of cake.

#3 was the reason for this post.

I had to move a bunch of stuff from one drive to another. Normally this is easy, just move all the said shit.

This is not so easy when it’s / with linux installed on it.

Normally, I’d say fuck my life a lot and have to reinstall everything, since moving an OS is never an easy task. With windows, might as well forget about it. I tried that once, no go at all.

Linux theoretically doesn’t care, which is awesome. The problem I was stuck at was how to do this efficiently, with minimal downtime. This is on a production server after all.

Did some research, found out that normally this would involve firing up a live CD and using dd to mirror image the drive to another one, then adjust the partition size on the new drive since it’s bigger, then expand the file system size to match it. This would have meant close to a day of downtime. Not an option.

XFS saves the day. There’s a few awesome tools that come with it, but not by default, that make this job quick and easy.

How I saved the day with these great tools: xfsdump, xfsrestore, & a Debian Lenny live CD.

1.) Quickly rebooted to the live CD and ran xfsdump to copy the file system to an external.
2.) Quickly rebooted back to the installed version, with only 32 minutes downtime to copy the drive to the external.
3.) While everything was back up, used xfsrestore to put the image onto the hard drive that was getting swapped. Nice thing is, I was able to have the drive pre-partitioned and pre-formatted for this already.
4.) Once done, shutdown and drive swap, followed by another quick boot into the live CD to reinstall grub to the new drive.
5.) Reboot back to the installed version, and everything worked perfectly, with only another 10 minutes of downtime.

So, I replaced the OS drive in under 45 minutes of downtime. Beat that!

I decided I’d VMWare a copy to see how good it would be. More or less I was expecting it to suck like all other Microsoft products I’ve used so far, but I was actually impressed.

It’s basically a better then Vista interface (somewhat like OS X ass raped Vista), and seems to be fairly stable. I haven’t managed to crash it yet, and I’ve had it for 3 days now. As always, I beat on Windows harshly.

Windows 7 Ultimate x86 Beta Build 7100

Things I like so far:
The interface is much nicer (I’m a *nix/OS X person though, so I’m biased towards that style)
HomeGroup (Media Center on steroids across a home network)
Gadgets (aka Widgets (see *nix/OS X))
Action Center (XP Security center, but not dumb, and does more)
Firewall with Advanced Security (The default firewall doesn’t suck as much)
It’s completely usable via Speech Recognition
Remote Apps (Remote Desktop, but specifically for certain applications)
Drive Encryption (From Vista Ultimate)
Backward Compatibility (It’ll run Windows 95 and newer apps, without any hassle (rumor has DOS/3.1, but I haven’t gotten that to work yet))
Hardware Compatibility (It seems to do tons with just the base install (Biometrics, GPS, etc))
New standard software (DVD Maker, new games, etc)
Internet Explorer isn’t a huge security nightmare for once

Things I hate so far:
Everything has been renamed, it’s a bitch finding things (eg: “Add & Remove Programs” = “Programs & Features”)
No default anti-virus (Does do spy-ware though (Windows Defender))

As you can see, I like it a lot more than I hate it.

All in all, I give it an 8.5 out of 10, which isn’t bad considering I rate XP at about 6.5 and Vista at about 5.

It’s still Windows though. I’ll take Debian over it any day

I had a rather funny conversation with Michelle earlier today:

Michelle: haha.
Michelle: i needa restart.
Joe: …..windows?
Joe: dont tell me your using windows…
Joe: hahaha
Michelle: you knew i was, smart one.
Joe: you nuked mint?
Michelle: why else on facebook would i say i have windows 7?
Michelle: haha.
Joe: haha dual boot?
Joe: so ew
***Joe pukes all over your computer
Joe: get rid of that horrid thing
Michelle: Hahahahaha.

Pretty much sums up my opinion on Windows 7.

Ok, so Windows 7 isn’t that bad, and Mint isn’t the greatest distro out there, but its still a lot better than Windows.

As always, Debian for me

So, lets see…

1.) Project B289959 is still at a total stand still due to a missing part. Hopefully this will get taken care of ASAP as many things are hinging on the SHO living soon.
2.) Project B289959 is killing Operation Kingpin. This is totally unacceptable and an alternative may have to be found in the near future, time is running out.
3.) Totem fails at life. It didn’t have a required codec, actually managed to automaticaly install what it wanted, then to tell me it doesn’t have the required codec. FAIL…
4.) My sleep schedule is totally messed up.
5.) Running out of hard drive space sucks.
6.) I’m not sure who’s helping who more, me or Kia. Google searches for Kia bring me quite a few visits, and I probably help Kia sell a few cars.

I’m done.